


A Little Window in the Void

by PerpetuallyScreaming



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Multiverse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-18
Updated: 2018-01-17
Packaged: 2018-12-31 10:21:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12130377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PerpetuallyScreaming/pseuds/PerpetuallyScreaming
Summary: Sci discovers a distant memory on the other side of a camera.





	1. The First Glimpse

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Squid](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Squid/gifts).



> Just a stupid little thing done based on a sketch request, but it's my first one-shot and first fanfic I've ever actually completed, so criticism is welcome. I might make more chapters if people want to see that kind of stuff, I guess. There's definitely more story to tell.

Sci stifled a groan as he clocked in for the day. Oh, sure, he loved what he did, and G's hours were more than fair, but he was anything but a  _mourning person_ , heh. Besides, today in particular he felt half-asleep - not quite sure what was real and what was left over from last night's dreams.

He knew this feeling all too well; evidently, another RESET had occurred. Despite being what he knew was early on in the long scheme of the timeline, not giving much reason for anyone conscious to start over already, there were always anomalies. Errors in the readings, mutations in the code, that sort of thing. Oh well. At least he didn't have to bear the brunt of it...at least, not  _this_ him.

Even so, his head screamed in a way that was less like a RESET and more like a hangover. As he was sitting down, it struck him why; in the rush of waking up late, he had forgotten to pick up coffee! Smiling because of his forgetfulness (and because he hardly had a choice), Sans quickly poured himself a cup.

Feeling the effects of the god blessed caffeine, Sans set to work. He started the projector, flipped his laptop open, and reached into the pocket of his lab coat. Both a blessing and a curse for the skeleton with a splitting headache, today's experiment was quite exciting.

After months upon months of research, he and his colleagues had at last been able to implant a camera-like device into the Void. If calculations were correct, and they always were, today he would finally be able to see from the viewpoint of someone inside the Void. He chuckled nervously, despite himself, and found the thumb drive in his pocket. Theoretically, it would interpret the data into visual form for analysis on the projector.

He fiddled with it until it went in, and eagerly waited for the app to load. Fullscreening it, he learned forwards to watch the progress bar go. 97%...98%...99%... _boom_.

A static noise rung in his...well, he wasn't quite sure what it rang into, but now was hardly the time for that. Wincing, and one-handedly covering his lack of ears, he clicked into sensitivity. To his relief, the white noise faded, and in its wake emerged a muffled...wait, that couldn't be right.

It was a perfect copy of fax machine dial up noises. He knew for a fact those weren't anywhere in the program code. The only possible source of the noise was the Void itself, but there was no logical explanation for that.

The noise stopped abruptly. Sans' insides beat, mirroring the sound of a heart. A long pause. He wondered if he should text Gray about this. He was starting to take out his phone when he heard a voice that sounded eerily like his own if it were on a broken record. "W͜h͢at͜?̧"

Silence. He closed his eyes to concentrate, searching for any sign of noise. "I-I̢'̢m͟...͟"

A beat.

"Heh̵ h̕eh ͏h̕e̸h..͠.a͝n̡d̴ he͜ d͝oesn't̕ e̷v̨e͟n r̨e̡m͟embe҉r͞?͜" Was there something sentient inhabiting the Void? Did who remember? He was totally lost.

"Hol͘d҉ ̶o͢n͟." A snap. Something that faintly resembled the sound elevators make when they open. The same sound in reverse. A...a crayon falling off a table? Something that could only be described as a pig turning over in its grave. The random sounds continued. Sans opened his eyes and clicked into the visual output tab.

Weird, the layout wasn't what he was expecting. Many of the others had theorized something like the absence of visuals incarnate. Personally, he thought the projector would only be able to handle a simple black, or what you see when you close your eyes. But no, all the "camera" picked up was a pure white.

He noticed the noises had stopped as his thoughts drifted off. He clicked into the input channel, smirking at the memory of G complaining it would be useless.

> Can you see this?

"H͢uh?͝!̨ Yea̡h.͘"

> Great! Who are you?

"B̕it͢ no͠s̕y̴,̵ aren̨'̡tch͡a? Heh he̢h h̵eh͜...perfe͏c͟t."

He heard another snap.

* Recipient has closed dialogue.

Darn it! He focused on the camera again. Suddenly, something opened - like a window in the middle of the air. It was a kind of peephole, a peephole to...wait, was that Snowdin?

The was no denying it, that was the patrol route Paps assigned him to. But how? Why? He pulled his glasses down over his eye sockets, and saw that the air - more accurately, the simulated sky - glowed not the usual cyan, but instead a hot red. Most mysterious...

_Crunch crrrunch._ He identified the sound as only a sentry could - footsteps in the snow, slow and steady, much like his own. In fact, at that moment, a figure came into sight on the screen. About his height, round white head, fuzzy slippers, shorts, jacket...wait a second.

It was him! Or him if he starred in My Chemical Romance, at least. He blushed. What, why? Why would this shocking scientific discovery, of all reactions, warrant blushing?

Yet blush he did. Almost independently of him, his hand moved to open the dialogue. He wanted - no, he  _needed_ to speak with this other Sans, to know him, to understand him. But all too soon, the peephole closed. "No!" he exclaimed aloud. Why was he getting so fucking emotional?

> No, give him back! I'll do anything!

He could here the glee in the record-scratch voice. "Excell̸e̷ņt͟. I'̕v͟e b͡e̴en̢ ̧wa͜nting ͏a ̕new͜ ͝p̡up͘pet̢."


	2. Shift

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sooo remember that fic I made forever ago? No? Does Christmas Eve seem like a timely time to update it? No? Do you want it though? No? K cool just checking

A shift.

Sans felt it clear as day, even though he was half-asleep. In the underground, you had to be alert. His br His boss had made that crystal clear for every goddamned second of this pathetic job. If you were going to stay alive, you first had to stay on duty. If you detected something a moment too late, you were dust. And right now, he detected a shift.

It was almost like a stutter in its nature, if not in its practice. Stutters made him feel powerless, and experience déjà vu. This...thing just made him feel real damn exposed. But just as suddenly as it came, it went. Like it wasn't supposed to be there, like some sort of glitch. He thought he caught a speck of white out of the corner of his eye.

He turned frantically. In the middle of the sky was...him? No, not him. This monster was as far from Sans as could be. He wore huge glasses and a relaxed smile, looking at something vaguely above him, though Sans couldn't fathom what. There was such pathetic, unguarded fear in his eye - no, not eye, eyes. Two of them, white. It was like him if he had - well, heck if he knew what shit he'd have to go through to end up like that.

The projection was collapsing inwards on itself. That couldn't be good. Thinking fast, he let out his hand, summoned his magic, and - too late. It was gone. Well, that had been...unexpected. Sans searched for a logical explanation. It couldn't have been an anomaly, of course - for starters, anomalies didn't have faces. It was a tear in the fabric of reality, yet it didn't seem to have any lasting damage. A portal, then? That seemed more likely. This was either very bad or would have absolutely no effect.

Fortunately for whoever that was, Sans was banking on the latter. He trekked on through Snowdin Forest, putting the thought out of his mind.

Sans had grown accustomed to putting stuff like that out of his mind.

Came with the trade.

Nothing to be worried about.

...out of his mind.

...any minute now.

Oh goddammit.

For whatever reason, Sans couldn’t stop thinking about that stupid little monster. It was irrational. Getting attached to a thought, from fear or anything else, was one of the biggest weaknesses you could possibly have. It was exploitable. It was naïve. It was stupid. Sans was stupid. Stupid, and apparently paranoid, because he felt another shift.

He turned around. Nothing. There was no one there. He was perfectly safe. Just paranoid.

“O͓̱̩͞oh,͎̻̹͍ ̡̤͉w̦e̦̗̝͉̻̥̮͡'͈͚͙̠̲v͉̦̱̩e͈ͅ ̨͔̟̦g̳̩̕o̪̤̹̮̠̘ͅt͍ ͚̝̘̹̬̣a̷n͓̬̦͠ o͎͚b̝̮͍͢ͅs̮̘͔̦̠͝e̗̱̠͈̞͍rv̶a̘n̲͠t̨͇̺̻͓̬͚͕ ̰̰̻͕͇̖͖o͇̯̘͙̪n̢̻̫͚̙̯e̦͕͍͔ ̣͕t̫̟͔͙̲h̼̭̟͉͕i̜̩̼̳̤͢s͖͕̳̩̹͓̘͡ ̷̳͔̘̹̗̝͎t̞̬̦̫i̭̪̜̳̕m̳̜̗͚̱̤͙e͠!̞̺͈̘͓͝”


	3. New Ones

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Error's master plan is revealed and that plan is to be very, very cranky.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can't exactly duplicate askers here, seeing as this isn't, you know, an ask blog, so I'm taking some creative liberties and putting words into the Internet's mouth here.  
> Also pardon my overindulgence in meta humor, I'm just getting it all out at the beginning.

Error was bored, bored.

Bored, bored of destroying timelines so methodically - taking out the flower, trapping the human, crossing them off his list, one by one - again and again. Oh! It bored him. Bored, bored of coming down to the final few only to discover them missing, but unable to shut down the timeline, as if they still existed - God, he wasn't frustrated, he was just - bored, yes, yes, bored. Bored, bored of the quiet, blank, and boring, so boring! - Anti-Void, with only the occasional chat with Number 13 or the stopping by of some askers to keep him company. Those, those - yes, those were the things he was very, very bored of indeed.

Needless to say, his boredom had nothing whatsoever to do with the party he had just gotten back from - no, no, no - for he had loathed the thing, tricked into it by that manipulative blue bastard of a thing.

No, that unspeakable, unspeakable thing was the farthest anything could be from the source of his boredom. Anyone who thought that would have to be delusional, though he couldn't confide that to the ~~voices in his head~~ ~~~~askers, because clearly quite a few of them were. Error couldn't stand idiocy.

Succumbing to a long-formed habit, he reached towards the entanglement of strings which held Sans Abomination Number 13, only to jerk it away. All at once, he felt exposed. He didn't mind this new feeling; on the contrary, Error savored every small scrap of sensation he could get, angling his face into the draft coming from the direction of the exposing feeling to - hold on.

He had not forgotten logic or gone insane - well, he wouldn't blame anyone for thinking that, but what really was insanity, anyways, but a sharpening of the senses? No - no, that was not it at all - he had merely, merely...forgotten the properties of the Anti-Void, yes, while being in other timelines too long!

Well, but here in the Anti-Void, as he sharply observed, feelings didn't usually have physical locations, right?

Well, but come to think of it, as he logically had, most feelings did not emit drafts of air.

And feelings did not make his eyes cloud with text, black, sharp, text, with a loud, piercing, robotic sound composed of 0s and 1s - hold on, that one made sense.

Dammit, he was glitching again. He closed his eyes best he could - mentally, at least - and, oh god, it would be over soon, over, happy thoughts, happy thoughts, happy thoughts, all in a row, and for the love of, would that hideous noise jusT SHUT UP-

As soon as it had come, the searing pain ceased, and with it, the insufferable noise.

In its place, however, came the far more sufferable noise of askers scuffling about. Many of them, suddenly, all shrieking variations of the same thing, a picture-perfect image in his mind from the bits and pieces.

_Science, Sci, Science_ _Sans_...was what he distinguished from the cacophony. _Watching,_ _listening...there, camera, monitor...Christmas Party, timeline-_ whoops, this last part wasn't translating too well. Supao?

In any case, Error was lost.

"W͜h͢at͜?̧?"

One voice, as was commonplace, rose high above the others.  _Hey Error! Sci's back from the Christmas party. Looks like the camera he's usually trained on the Void...missed its target by a dimension._

Error slowly processed this. Sci - that was the one in the nerd coat, duh - was back from the Christmas party - what, he'd exited the dimension? About time; it had been, what, years? Time was irrelative in the Anti-Void, but whatever. It wasn't like the party had decided to take a hiatus or anything. But that part about the camera. That was the kicker.

If he recalled, there was some small headcanon-universe of Science. (How he hated headcanon universes - there were already the original inaccuracies by nature of AU; what more did one need?) Usually, these isolated timelines had "Sci" doing, well, nerd stuff, duh. He vaguely recalled some sort of device he usually managed to create (talk about OP) to inspect the Void, but if the...askers were telling...him...then...

"I-I̢'̢m͟...͟" he rationalized aloud, before realizing that if the askers were telling the truth, he was being overheard.

Another noise rose above the others.  _Omg they went home so drunk!! Hc that they don't remember anything just bc of the nog lol_

A dark chuckle escaped Error despite himself.

"Heh̵ h̕eh ͏h̕e̸h..͠.a͝n̡d̴ he͜ d͝oesn't̕ e̷v̨e͟n r̨e̡m͟embe҉r͞?͜"

He clasped his hand over his mouth, remembering his apparent eavesdropper.

"Hol͘d҉ ̶o͢n͟."

With a snap of his fingers, a doorway blipped into existence, and he stepped through into his favorite place to think (and, according to the askers, leave readers hanging?), Outertale.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Science Sans belongs to chaotichero  
> Underfell Sans belongs to the Underfell community  
> Error Sans belongs to loverofpiggies  
> Underswap Sans belongs to popcornpr1nce

**Author's Note:**

> Science Sans belongs to chaotichero  
> Underfell Sans belongs to the Underfell community  
> Error Sans belongs to loverofpiggies


End file.
